Moerlein Lager House redeems 2 dreams

Brewpub pours life into riverfront and reclaims city's brewing heritage

Feb. 19, 2012

Owner Greg Hardman toasts Christian Moerlein on a mural of the orginal brewers of beer in Cincinnati at the Moerlein Lager House at The Banks on Thursday, Feb. 16. The 1,100-seat restaurant and brew-pub will have its grand opening on Feb. 27. / The Enquirer/Leigh Taylor

Meet brewmaster Richard Dube

Overseeing the making of beer at the Lager House will be brewmaster Richard Dube. Dube has brewed for Molson and Labatt’s, two well-regarded Canadian beers. He helped Boston Beer Co. grow into the giant of craft brewing that it is today, brewing its Samuel Adams beers in Boston and at its Cincinnati brewery. A French Canadian from Quebec (his name is pronounced ree-SHARD doo-BAY), Dube is a microbiologist by training. After more than 20 years of making beer, Dube made a career change and began teaching science at Lloyd High School. When Greg Hardman started a nationwide search for a brewmaster, Dube saw an opportunity to get back into brewing.

By the numbers: Christian Moerlein Lager House

$10 million: Estimated cost to build the lager house 14,000 square feet of dining and entrainment space on two levels, double the size of Newport’s Hofbrauhaus 5,000 barrels of beer will be brewed annually 3,000 meals are expected to be served daily out of the lager house 1,400 people can be accommodated inside the lager house and at its outdoor beer gardens 724 dining and bar seats are available 250 employees will work there 200 different styles of beers will be available throughout the year 90 beer taps are located at two full-service bars 20 guest beers will be featured 8 Christian Moerlein beers will be on tap at all times

Opening night gala

What: “Moer’ For Cincinnati,” a grand opening gala of the Moerlein Lager House When: 6:30 p.m. Feb. 25 Cost: Sold out, but tickets were $150 per person Details: The evening benefits Cincinnati Parks’ Explore Nature! program. It will feature Christian Moerlein beer and specialty international brands, dining stations throughout the Lager House with 19th-century inspired cuisine, a silent auction, a raffle for a private party for up to 25 people at the Moerlein Lager House, live music and more.

Public opening

What: The Moerlein Lager House at Smale Riverfront Park opens to the public When: 11 a.m. Feb. 27; ribbon cutting at 10:45 a.m. Details: Regular hours for the Lager House will be 11 a.m. to midnight Monday through Thursday; 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday; and 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday.

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When it opens to the public on Feb. 27, the Moerlein Lager House will be a fine place to enjoy good beer and good food on the Cincinnati riverfront.

But that’s only half the story.

The rest of the story is the long-awaited redemption of sorts for downtown Cincinnati, where development of more than 50 valuable acres along the Ohio River had been frustrated for years. Now, the new brewpub and restaurant has potential to be the destination for the between-the-stadiums development that includes The Banks. At the same time, it provides a vital link to Cincinnati’s rich, but once endangered, brewing heritage.

With all that on the line, this brewpub has a lot to live up to. A sneak preview provided to The Enquirer reveals that it will.

Previous reports have the Lager House as a $4 million project. The true cost is more than double that – $10 million-plus, according to Greg Hardman, the managing partner and beer entrepreneur whose vision created the Lager House.

“There was no cheapin’ out here,” Hardman says.

For him, the Lager House is the last piece of a grand vision to restore Cincinnati’s rightful place in brewing history. It’s a quest he’s been pursuing for a decade, and with a Feb. 25 grand-opening gala looming, the vision is about to be complete.

As he leads a hard-hat tour just days before the sold-out $150-a-head gala, though, the Lager House is still a construction site.

Workers are laying pavers in the outdoor beer garden. Boilermen are just beginning to test pressure on the works that will provide the power behind the Lager House microbrewery.

The brew kettles are still empty; beer hasn’t even begun to ferment yet. A worker is polishing a granite countertop, while two others are sponge-painting a ceiling.

Even with the looming deadline and construction noise, Hardman is still smiling. Cincinnati’s modern-day beer baron is about to see the last and biggest piece of his plan to bring Cincinnati’s beer brands back to life, and a little construction dust isn’t about to dampen the moment.

Gathering place also will be a shrine to local beer history

Built next door to Great American Ball Park, the Lager House is a sure bet to be Party Central before and after Reds games. It can hold up to 1,400 people indoors and outdoors. Beer will flow through 90 taps.

Three kitchens will prepare food ranging from beer-braised pork belly with spaetzle (German noodles) and marinated mushrooms to grilled sea bass with butternut squash risotto, supervised by an executive chef from the Cunningham Group, the restaurateur partner in the venture.

A 50-foot bar on the main floor will open up to an outdoor beer garden in warm weather. The restaurant will open on to Jacob Schmidlapp Event Lawn, a green space that can hold 3,000, with a stage at its west end.

“It’s meant to celebrate our past and take Cincinnati brewing into the future,” Hardman says.

Cincinnati’s past and present beer history will be everywhere:

Visitors will be greeted with a built-in timeline showing every beer bottle Moerlein ever made.

Upstairs is the Schoenling Booth, an alcove that will hold the original stainless steel Schoenling sign donated by a descendant of the founding family.

The John Hauck Brewing Co. room, a private dining room, commemorates the founder of that West End brewery.

The Windisch-Muhlhauser dining room calls to mind the old maker of Lion Beer at West Liberty and Central Parkway.

The Hudepohl Bar will serve beer and food on the second floor.

In the Burger Hallway will hang memorabilia from that Cincinnati brewer.

Murals of Cincinnati’s beer barons, painted by Jim Effler, a Cincinnati artist who has designed labels for Moerlein bottles, will hang inside and out.

The place is located inside the Phyllis Smale Riverfront Park, giving it a prime location with unobstructed views of the Ohio, the Suspension Bridge and the Northern Kentucky riverfront.

It will be fun. Hardman, a good-natured beer aficionado, knows that. But he also has a grand plan.

He leans against a floor-to-ceiling window on the east side of the building and peers straight up Main Street as it leads to Over-the-Rhine, the neighborhood that was at the center of 19th-century Cincinnati brewing.

“That’s the exact route beer traveled literally to the Port of Cincinnati to bring their beer around the world,” he says. “It almost makes me cry.” He’s serious.

Brewer's mission: To restore Cincinnati's rightful place

Hardman became taken with Cincinnati’s beer history when he had a great job as president of Warsteiner U.S., leading sales, marketing and distribution of the German beer import in the states.

A native of Rhode Island and a graduate of Ohio University, Hardman landed in Cincinnati thanks to his wife, Patty, a native. When he rose to the top of Warsteiner, he kept his base here.

He remembers a poignant moment that may have been a low point in Cincinnati beer history. He was invited to watch as the last Cincinnati-brewed Hudepohl rolled off the bottling line. The company’s beer operations had been purchased by Cleveland-based Snyder International, and brewing was transferred to Maryland.

When these homegrown beer brands, with deep links to the Reds and pony kegs around town, were bought by out-of-towners (from Cleveland of all places!) there was something about a loss of city pride and the passing of a cornerstone industry that Cincinnati had been built on.

The brands languished. It was hard to even find a six-pack of Hudy in the store. Only Little Kings, with its quirky little green bottles, received solid marketing and distribution support.

When the brands went up for sale, Hardman felt the emotional tug to return them to their hometown, but did it make business sense? He took the leap, gathering 60 Cincinnati beer brands, returning the ownership to Cincinnati.

“After I bought them, I remember asking, ‘Did I just buy the Edsel?’ ”

He began resuscitation.

The Lager House will do double duty as a marketing touchpoint for all these brands. Tens of thousands of people a year will come here and be immersed in the Moerlein brands, eating, drinking and having a good time. Talk about advertising to a susceptible audience.

Restaurant will be showpiece for Downtown redevelopment

It will be good for business, but it’s also being seen as good for the city. The Lager House will be physically located inside the Phyllis W. Smale Riverfront Park, a $120 million development that’s been in the making since at least 2003 and is now coming to fruition.

The park board put out a nationwide request for proposals to build an entertainment venue, and Hardman’s idea won. Being the hometown boy with a hometown idea helped.

“What really won it for Greg was his passion and his commitment to bringing back Cincinnati’s beer heritage,” says Willie Carden, Cincinnati’s parks director. “When you know it’s from the person’s heart, it just gives you a leg up.”

Hardman is so passionate about Cincinnati’s brewing past that his original vision for the Lager House was to base the design on Christian Moerlein’s 19th-century brewery, parts of which are still standing on Elm Street in Over-the-Rhine. After several discussions with his architect, Mount Adams-based Greg Tilsley, he gave that up.

“We wanted to do a glass building, to emphasize looking out,” Tilsley said.

The striking, angular design projects forward to the Ohio River, and floor-to-ceiling windows offer great views and natural light. The design incorporates touchpoints from the old breweries.

With the coming completion of the riverfront park and the Lager House, Cincinnati’s long-planned riverfront will have finally rebounded. In 2001, at what may have been a low point in Cincinnati economic development, the Hofbrauhaus, a spinoff of the famous Hofbrauhaus in Cincinnati’s sister city of Munich, decided to locate in Newport rather than Cincinnati as originally planned.

That decision came after a planned aquarium project in Cincinnati went to Newport, after a seafood festival moved across the river after 14 years on the Cincinnati riverfront, and as the Newport on the Levee shopping and entertainment venue opened. All of that seemed to crystallize the political gridlock, turf wars and inertia that had plagued development in Cincinnati for so long.

That’s changing, though, and the brewhouse on the river is a symbol.

“At one time, The Banks was nowhere,” Carden says. “Now The Banks is moving. At one time, the park was nowhere. Now it’s moving.”

Hardman sees the bigger picture, too. The Lager House, he says is “a calculated risk based on a belief that we want to succeed as a city.”

It will be all that – and it will still be a nice place to enjoy a good, cold beer.